Correspondents' Correspondence Communist Politics
BERGER, SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA \ WALTER GOODMAN \ MIKE BERNICK \ MICHAEL
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHERCOMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Communist Politics Rome—Over the past few years, TV...
...Milton Shapp can't make it because you know why...
...Tokyo's already impressive public transportation system is expanding as well...
...Those that are especially well-off aid the less favored, mainly the women's and graduate schools...
...With reductions in British living standards being predicted, many students and faculty believe the tutorial system and the traditional luxuries are destined to fade away...
...As you become known to the owners, and to other local merchants, you can pay now, or later...
...Birch Bayh can't make it because how many people are going to vote for a candidate whose name reminds them of after-shave lotion...
...Was all this a freak bit of weather...
...Simon Mares, a second-year student at University College reading Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE), a member of the Executive Committee of the University Labor Club: "I get up around 9:30...
...Neither during its 1964-70 term of office nor during its present reign, however, has Labor been less generous than the Conservatives to Oxford...
...There seems no question that air pollution in 1975 is much less hazardous than it was when I left the country...
...The existence of hundreds of prison camps in the USSR is a fact not even the Italian (PCI) and French (PCF) Communist parties dare deny...
...The 34 colleges that comprise Oxford are administratively autonomous, operating their own dining facilities, chapels, libraries, and tutorial systems...
...Breakfast in my room...
...Marchais is worried...
...Sargent Shriver can't make it because very few voters trust their brothers-in-law...
...Communist Politics Rome—Over the past few years, TV viewers and radio listeners here have been presented with a totally negative picture of America's government, society and way of life...
...Then possibly a lecture—I go to four lectures a week...
...Lunch, and then punting on the river...
...Yet within this diversity is a coherent Japanese life style that manages to maintain critically important human satisfactions often overlooked by the Japanese themselves, who regard them as too mundane to be significant...
...The inadequacy and blandness of that response stung Corriere Delia Sera editorialist Alberto Ronchey into noting that it is about time for Communist chief Enrico Berlinguer "to revise the ritual, diplomatic, bureaucratic formula...
...A student's academic record is based entirely on exams, called "schools," taken at the end of his program—four years in classics and chemistry and three years in most other subjects...
...The Labor party has always criticized what Anthony Crossland has described as Britain's "snobbish, caste-ridden, hierarchial obsession with university status," and periodically it announced its intention to direct significant sums of money to the technical training institutions...
...Although Professor Jun Ui of Tokyo University, one of Japan's foremost pollution fighters, insists a crisis is at hand, I reached a different conclusion by using my nose and eyes...
...They were victims of photochemical smog, a peculiar blend of vehicle exhaust, high heat and humidity...
...Henry Jackson can't make it because he used to be a hawk...
...By contrast, reporting on the Soviet Union and China is oh-so-careful...
...Besides the funds received from the University, separate endowments have allowed the colleges to keep up their expansive lawns, gardens and age-old buildings...
...Each student is assigned a tutor who directs his work and usually meets with him weekly for a couple of hours...
...Have some breakfast...
...Lengthy documentaries on both countries stress the beauty of the landscape, praise the industriousness of the people and show quaint customs, while assiduously avoiding any serious assessment of political life, economic conditions or civil liberties...
...Two new subway lines opened in the past three years, and two more are under construction...
...This way of life, built on human contact and cooperation, is not restricted to my "urban village...
...George Wallace can't make it because people outside the South don't vote for racists even though they are populists...
...In addition, he serves at evening meals, which are sit-down affairs...
...I feel the city government really has been doing something...
...The development can perhaps best be understood in the light of French domestic politics...
...And if the expensive Ginza hostess bars complain that the current recession is hurting them, the far more numerous local (nonhostess) bars continue to thrive as social gathering places that provide alcohol, lighthearted conversation and singing for men—and for an increasing number of single women...
...He feels his leadership is not as solid as it should be...
...That sense is reinforced by the general improvement the Japanese can see in the quality of their lives...
...Have a drink with friends before lunch...
...In 1974, 65 per cent of the University's income consisted of a government grant...
...He apparently hopes, however, not only to refurbish his image as the advocate of a modern, flexible line?opposed by PCF number-two man Roland Leroy, by superorthodox Jean Kanapa and by labor boss Georges Seguy—but to attract the uncommitted Leftist electorate that, in recent times, has been leaning toward Francois Mitterand's Socialist party.—Silvio Senigallia Favored to Lose New York—Herewith, your up-to-the-minute handicapper with the inside stuff on the reported starters in the Presidential race this year...
...Jimmy Carter can't make it because he has not been Jimmy Carter for long enough...
...Although lectures and seminars are offered, actual instruction is on an individual basis...
...One need simply recall Peking's violent reaction two years ago to Michelangelo Antonioni's excellent and basically favorable documentary on China, and the apologetic Italian counterreaction...
...where the night is filled not with fear but with the sounds of people moving about and chatting as they do during the day...
...Tea at 4:00 either in the JCR or a friend's room, and dinner at 6:30...
...He awakens them, makes their beds, cleans their rooms and washes their dirty crockery...
...Anne's, one of the most popular speakers in the Oxford Union: "I usually awaken around noon...
...Above all, the centerpiece of Oxford education, the tutorial system, remains intact...
...Gerald Ford can't make it because domestic politics is not Henry Kissinger's strong suit...
...One reason for this is that a majority of the 23 Cabinet ministers are Oxford "Old Boys...
...Eugene McCarthy can't make it because everyone knows he doesn't want it...
...Place your bets accordingly.?Walter Goodman Unchanging Oxford Oxford—Britain has experienced sharp changes over the last decade, one of the most prominent being a reduction in the inequality of education...
...Housing remains a serious national problem, yet the quality and number of new apartments has increased dramatically in recent years, as has construction of educational facilities, including a new building and gym at my local elementary school...
...This arrangement allows even the conscientious student to enjoy a relaxed routine...
...Then there's always a tea in the afternoon and at night a play or party or debate...
...The evidence is overwhelming...
...It is found in other large cities, in country towns, in suburban developments...
...The sight of barbed wire, police dogs, turrets, armed sentries, and miserable inmates, on the other hand, though distressing, was not surprising...
...Whereas the PCI behaved according to form, the PCF responded rather differently when the film was shown on French TV...
...At least half the business of the restaurants in my neighborhood is done door-to-door, by delivering lunches and dinners to private homes and apartments...
...Unlike similar occasions in the past, the French Communists did not automatically denounce the telecast as an anti-Soviet provocation...
...Usually the day and night before my tutorial...
...Nelson Rockefeller can't make it because when he tells the conservatives of his party that he is one of them, they don't believe him but the liberals do...
...In the summer of 1971, children collapsed in playgrounds not far from my neighborhood...
...traditionally a dour, orthodox, predominantly Stalinist organization...
...Tea, visit friends, and then dinner, and after dinner there's usually a meeting or the Union...
...He is also unhappy about the unfavorable Communist-Socialist ratio on the French Left...
...Our Japanese friends say no...
...Edward Kennedy can't make it because Chappaquiddick is one of those irritating words that nobody can spell and therefore nobody can forget...
...And at night frequently out drinking with friends at the pub...
...It is difficult to know to what extent all this is due to the influence of Left-wing intellectuals in the top ranks of the state-owned TV-radio network (RAI), or to the failure of the U.S...
...A scout usually services a staircase of eight or 10 men...
...Nobody worries about credit...
...It seems to give the Japanese their resiliency, their ability to cope...
...in the wealthier ones, such as Magdalen and Merton, the majority have two-room suites...
...Why, I don't know...
...Yet the lack of outright rejection was something new for the PCF...
...Bolstered by its endowments and political ties, Oxford will likely remain for some time a center of academic excellence, refinement, grace and comfort: the calm above any storm.—Mike Bernick The Pleasures of Japan Tokyo—To take up residence in Japan again after a three-year absence is to confront all the sharp contrasts of a people that has produced tranquil Zen temples alongside bullet trains and hopeless urban tangles...
...In commenting on the film, PCI leaders stuck to the old, convenient line...
...Lloyd Bentsen and Terry San-ford and Robert Byrd can't make it because more people have heard of Morris Udall...
...and where the local cop, like the local grocer, the local laundryman and the local noodle shop proprietor, is part of a minicommunity within a massive city of over 11 million people...
...Richard O'Sullivan, a second-year law student in Christ Church College, active in the University Conservative Club and the Oxford Union, the debating society: " I wake up around 8:00...
...Edmund Muskie can't make it because he can't make it...
...When do I do my work...
...People can ride almost anywhere in this vast city for less than 50 cents...
...Frank Church can't make it because the CIA has a file on him...
...There is no evidence that Marchais has been converted to Berlinguer's strategy of "moderation and respectability...
...Morris Udall can't make it because very few people know who he is, and most of them think he's his brother...
...Instead, more in sorrow than in anger, they stated that if the film was genuine they would "express deep surprise and strictest condemnation.' Obviously, PCF boss Georges Marchais was being disingenuous in suggesting surprise at evidence of Soviet labor camps when their existence goes back to 1918 and Lenin...
...where the garbage is picked up promptly three times a week...
...I could not help feeling rather envious.—MICHAEL BERGER...
...Neither did they follow Pravda in claiming the documentary was a fabrication...
...Work for a couple of hours...
...Yet at Oxford the genteel life goes on as usual...
...Other improvements are equally noticeable...
...Roshanne Dedhar, a second-year PPE student in St...
...Hubert Humphrey can't make it because he has been Hubert Humphrey for too long...
...For this American, however, it is far from insignificant to live in a neighborhood where one's children can walk peacefully to school...
...where the streets are free of litter because each household contributes to keeping them that way...
...The party paper L'Unita merely wrote: "We have frequently expressed our views and criticized the limitations still restricting democratic rights and liberties in Soviet society...
...Then to the Junior Common Room (JCR) to read the papers...
...For most there are servants, or "scouts," too...
...In nearly every college, each student has his own room...
...George McGovern can't make it because he used to be a dove...
...embassy here to complain...
...In any case, the network's recent airing of a television film purporting to show a Soviet labor camp located outside the Latvian capital of Riga filled many Italians with justifiable surprise...
...But if that's so, the sands in the hourglass still are far from running out...
...But last summer, hot and humid as always, I witnessed an astonishing string of brilliant blue skies...
...RAI does not like to receive official complaints from foreign governments, and squeaky wheels usually get the oil...
...Then lunch and in the afternoon I might go down to the river...
...So while our neighbors are concerned about rising food prices, the cost of fuel to heat their homes this winter and the pressures their children feel in the highly competitive Japanese educational system, they harbor much less bitterness than Americans do because they retain a sense of community...
...Lunch, and then either schoolwork or a Labor Club meeting or activity...
...It's been getting better year by year," a neighbor remarked...
...The Japanese on the whole like working and playing together, and should a cross-section of them suddenly be deposited in the middle of Montana, they would probably regroup in their traditional manner— living in tightly-knit clusters on the basis of interlocking relationships, placing the community before the individual, acknowledging the darker aspects of man and modern life yet pursuing life to the fullest...
...There are boat races in spring, garden parties in summer, expensive formal balls at the end of the academic year, and the students continue to come mostly from the upper classes...
...As I walked around my neighborhood one night recently, taking in a typical seasonal festival that had people dancing and singing in the streets, I remembered that my father once told me many American cities were like this in the old days...
...The instructors do not give grades...
...Consider these descriptions of Oxford life...
...Oxford has also been able to continue attracting the foremost scholars and to maintain its research facilities, thanks to a high level of government support despite the country's severe economic problems...
...Over one million prisoners, Ronchey added, are today confined in the Gulag Archipelago, a violation of human rights that cannot be shrugged off with comments about "an atmosphere of intolerance" in the Soviet Union...
...They include Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, as well as the three most outspoken Left-wing Cabinet members, Michael Foot, Anthony Benn and Barbara Castle...
...Fred Harris can't make it because people don't vote for populists unless they are also racists...
...Ronald Reagan can't make it because he is a bad actor...
Vol. 59 • February 1976 • No. 3
